WWALS Watershed Coalition advocates for conservation and stewardship of the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, Little, and Suwannee River watersheds in south Georgia and north Florida through education, awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen activities.

Tag Archives: fracked methane

FPL’s planned-for-a-decade pipeline to the sea just happens to connect
Sabal Trail with an LNG export port. Nevermind that this MR-RV Lateral
was never run through the FERC permitting process: FERC rolled it into
Florida Southeast Connection.

FPL is seeking state approval for a 32-mile natural gas pipeline to
provide an uninterrupted supply to Florida Power & Light Co.’s
new Riviera Beach plant.

Map: Palm Beach Post, 31 March 2012.

The story said FPL was working with FDEP to determine the final route.
It also said:

The project is not related to FPL’s proposed $1.5 billion, 300-mile
natural gas pipeline that would have run from Bradford County to
Martin County. The Florida Public Service Commission Continue reading →

For more than 20 hours starting Saturday, September 29, 2018, the Sabal Trail interstate natural gas pipeline leaked “26.40516 MMscf” of “Non-odorized natural gas“ and “10,405.5 lbs” of “VOC” (presumably Volatile Organic Compounds) at its Hildreth Compressor Station in Suwannee County, Florida. A week later Sabal Trail filed a report with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), the text of which is appended to this letter.

I have several questions:

Why did Sabal Trail take more than a week to report this incident to FDEP?

Did Sabal Trail report this incident to PHMSA? If so, please send a copy of that report, or how to get it.

Has PHMSA filed a report about this incident? If so, please send a copy or how to get it.

Is PHMSA investigating this incident? If so, when will the investigation be complete? Are there any interim results or opportunities for public comment into the process?

Since Sabal Trail wrote “nothing in the yard caused alarms” and “Site is unmanned,” how did Sabal Trail discover this leak?

Solar in Florida is not just for Duke and FPL anymore:
Tampa Electric is building 260 megawatt hours of solar power, and
the Florida PSC and Office of Public Counsel are praising it for reducing
coal and natural gas burning.
Even FPSC, which approved the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline boondoggle
only five years ago, is starting to look up and see the sun in the Sunshine State.

Robert Powelson’s decision to exit the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission less than a year into his term could leave natural gas
pipeline developers in the lurch and policy critics scrambling for
how to approach the commission’s coming 2-2 partisan split.

The Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline was granted eminent domain in
order to run through some of the private properties along its path.
In doing so it was required to offer what the defense calls ‘just
compensation.’

One Moultrie land owner was offered around $20,000 for an easement
on his property. This week a jury, siding with the land owner,
decided that was not enough.

June 26, 2018, Valdosta, GA —
The jury deliberated a bit less than an hour two hours,
delivering a verdict just before 7PM tonight:
$103,385 for easement and
$4,531.50 for timber.
The figures offered by Sabal Trail were
$19,979 for easement and
$4,117 for timber.
Assuming these numbers transcribed from various speakers
are correct, the jury awarded five times what
Sabal Trail offered for the pipeline easement and somewhat
more than their offer for timber.

When I started out the day, I wasn’t planning on spending the morning watching jury selection but I did. Honestly, everyone should go observe court our government in action now and then. Voir dire!
I knew that electronic devices weren’t allowed so I left my phone in the car. I couldn’t find any paper so I used Moonwalking with Einstein to remember things.

I arrived at the Federal Building about 9:15AM and noticed the changes since the post office moved out.
The only thing you can do is go into the elevator.
I took the elevator to the second floor to the security screening but had to go back to the car to get ID.
I successfully negotiated security by 9:30AM.

It’s not just GE and Siemens that are
“experiencing disruption of unprecedented scope and speed,”
power plant builder Fluor finds
“The challenges we have experienced over the last two years on
gas-fired power projects are inconsistent with the results we have
historically achieved.”
Maybe you should have bet on sun and wind power, Fluor, Siemens, and GE,
instead of fracked methane and nukes.

EPA doesn’t even remember when it sent its own greenhouse gas (GHG)
comments to FERC, forgets that it already told FERC nevermind,
and now says, despite copious evidence filed by
Senators, professors,
Riverkeepers, and environmental organizations from multiple states
as far away as Colorado, that
FERC’s incorrect and inadequate Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statemen (FSEIS) rates “Lack of Objections or “LO””.

This latest EPA letter is dated November 20, 2017,
but FERC didn’t inform intervenors about it until today, two weeks later.
The EPA letter claims:

The EPA commented on the FEIS on January 25, 2016.
In those comments the EPA provided several recommendations including
that the FERC consider a detailed evaluation of greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions in future analyses.

Yet FERC’s Docket CP15-17 shows no comment by EPA in January 2016.
It does show this same G. Alan Farmer, Director,
Resource Conservation and Restoration Division, EPA,
wrote a letter to FERC filed 1 December 2015 as
Accession Number
20171201-0034 (see also WWALS blog post),
in which he said nothing I can see about greenhouse gases, but he did
basically say “nevermind”
to
EPA’s extensive letter of October 26, 2015, filed as Accession Number 0151102-0219
(clean text on the WWALS website),
which October letter did include: Continue reading →